To M. I. Frumkin!

5/VI.

Comrade Frumkin!

For this absurd business with the fund for the South-Eastern Economic Council, I blame both the NKVT (a disgrace!) and you 369. You have only been whining, when you should have submitted precise proposals to the Council of Labor and Defense back in April: 1) a calendar program for gold shipments of such-and-such amount; 2) wool shipments of such-and-such amount, etc.

But you have been whining from April right through to June.

Now we must complete what has been left undone.

Submit to the Council of Labor and Defense by Wednesday (I can appoint a commission tomorrow, 6/VI, — it can be appointed by agreement of the People's Commissars) a most precisely worked-out calendar program of detailed measures.

Coordinate on this same matter with Khinchuk (he seems to know trade. Nobody at Komprod knows anything).

Write me at once — do you now guarantee that you will get things done properly, and precisely what?

Will you be able to conduct trade with Constantinople in a businesslike manner? Or will you run into "Ancona" 370 again? into speculators, swindlers (and bankrupts: there are swarms of them in Constantinople) and only bring shame on yourself and the whole "goods-exchange operation" of the South-Eastern Economic Council?

The South-Eastern Economic Council must show more initiative, but it must also bear more responsibility.

(If you are not going back there again, call Beloborodov or Kaganovich to the direct line and tell them everything I am writing to you; finally, achieve results and verify matters through actual work).

Let the South-Eastern Economic Council stop whining and submit businesslike proposals to the Council of Labor and Defense in good time and not fall behind with supervision of their implementation 371.

I await your letter. With comradely greetings, Lenin

Written June 5, 1921

First published in 1932

in Lenin Miscellany XX

Printed from the manuscript